


A Girl

by GrumpyJenn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anonymous prompt, Grief/Mourning, Library, Loss, Prompt Fic, Timey-Wimey, reference to miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyJenn/pseuds/GrumpyJenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: clara is river and 11's daughter; the only person who knows is river</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amie33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amie33/gifts).



“There’s only one time I _could_...”

 _He had been wrong,_ River thought. There were _two_ times he could have given her the sonic screwdriver. It had just been so long since the other possibility had even been an option that it had slipped his mind entirely. For years.

For centuries.

The conception of a child. Of _his_ child.

A girl.

 _Clara_ , River thought.

The child was... different. _Something new_ , River’s husband would call her if he knew about her. But he mustn’t know, River was sure of it, she was an archaeologist after all, and Clara’s history showed the Doctor didn’t meet her until she was an adult. Clara would be all over space and time, and yes, River thought, she _had_ looked. Forget spoilers, this was her _child_ , likely the only child she’d ever call her own, and she would look if she damn well pleased.

And she would invoke Rule One so the Doctor’s knowledge of her pregnancy was truncated. He would know she was pregnant, he would give her the screwdriver, it was a fixed point. But he would never see the child born; she would let him assume by her grief - and the grief was very real though the reason was not - that she had miscarried. She lied to him and she hated it. But hadn’t she lied to him all along? She’d known about the Library for decades, centuries, known she would die there, known the importance of the screwdriver. Of _course_ she did; what kind of an archaeologist would avoid the largest library in the universe?

Because she knew, River did, that she would have to give the child up. She couldn’t raise her own daughter herself; she wasn’t there in the histories with Clara, nor was the Doctor. But others were; a couple in Victorian England were historically her parents, and there were others further away from the child. Others she trusted. Even though at least one of them was dead. But they would care for her baby from afar, when she could not. And her throat ached with the knowledge.

But first River had things to do. She went to Demon’s Run, and found the Sontaran’s - Strax, he was called - body. She went to Sontar and bullied them into using their own cloning tech to revive him. She took him to a place where the Doctor could find him in time to go to Victorian England and settle him with Vastra and Jenny, and then she left notes. Time-locked notes, to all of them - Vastra and Jenny, Strax, and her beloved. Notes that told Clara’s history as far as River knew it, notes that they would find when the time was right.

And then River Song took her baby - her tiny daughter, so sweet and so special - and went back a few years from Vastra and Jenny and Strax. She took baby Clara to a woman and a man. Poor but healthy, loving and gentle and kind, and there River told them she could not keep her baby. The woman cried and looked pleadingly at her husband, and he smiled at her. “Of course we’ll take her for ye, ma’am,” the woman said, “For after me own wee baby died last winter we can’t...” and she choked and broke down entirely.

River looked at the pair of them, so young and so hopeful, and she felt terribly, terribly old. “Please,” she said, voice thick with tears behind it. “She must think she’s yours. She must _be_ yours. It’s...” _How to explain a fixed point in time to these simple people?_ she thought wildly. “It’s Fate. Please.”

And she left her baby there.

\--/-- 

“River? You came back!” There he was, her husband, finally snapped out of the terrible mood he’d been in since her parents had... but he was babbling, about a young human woman named Clara, and Vastra and Strax and Jenny and killer snowmen and Sherlock Holmes, and she waited until she could get a word in edgewise.

“Hello, Sweetie,” she said, and at her tone the Doctor looked more closely at her. She looked _terrible_ , as though she was... damaged. Grieving and sad and... the last time he had seen her he had given her the screwdriver, it was a fixed point and he’d given it to her then because she had just told him she was... oh _no_.

“River. My River, what is it?”

River stumbled toward him - _River_ never _stumbles_ , his mind protested; _she's nothing if not graceful_ \- and flung herself into his arms, sobbing as if her hearts were broken.

And for a long time, the only thing she said between sobs was _our baby_...

**Author's Note:**

> I am seriously annoyed with the prompter.
> 
> Because my eyes hurt from weeping as I write.


End file.
